Snow leopards are ravaging Hushe and the village elder, Haji Ibrahim, is not happy. He thinks that there are fifty to sixty of them in the neighbouring valleys and around fifteen in the surrounds of Hushe alone. Hushe used to be a hunting park until five or six years ago but the government has since put a ban on killing the endangered animals. No one has shot a snow leopard since then and their population is growing fast. Every year they are taking a greater toll on the livestock of Hushe, killing two to three dozen zhoes, yakmos and yaks.
For three days, I searched for them in this remote Himalayan region of Pakistan. On the first day, I saw at least four tracks, all of them from different times. Some were several days old, others less than a few hours. They criss-crossed the main trail, which was used by cowherds and their yaks on their way to the alpine pastures.
On the fourth day, I arrived at a pasture. The sun was warm, the sky clear. An icy river gurgled below. Birds chirped in the trees. Rock spires rose hundreds of metres around me, like cut-outs from a Tolkein fantasy. The carcass of a goat lay ahead. It had been dead for over a week. Flies were sitting on its open pupils. Its neck was broken and the flesh from its neck down to its ribs had been stripped from the bone. Its rear had also been eaten and its legs stuck out at impossible angles. The smell of rotting flesh was strong. Fifty yards ahead lay a yak, probably dead for months. Its flesh had dried in the sun and its innards had been ripped out. Like the goat's, the yak's neck was twisted also and the flesh from neck to collarbone eaten.
When I returned to Hushe, I discovered that a snow leopard had attacked and fatally wounded a zho the previous night. It would have taken a pack of snow leopards to attack a zho, Haji Ibrahim said. A single animal couldn't have tackled such a large bovine by itself. Until a few years ago, attacks on zhos and yaks were unknown. Now they are frequent. Haji Ibrahim thinks that the snow leopards are getting braver. Perhaps they also increasing in number. He hopes that one day he would be able to capture a couple of them and show the world what a nuisance they are.
Baltistan is Shia heartland and the Baltis are fiercely against the Taliban and their allies. During the late eighties, Zia ul Haq diverted Afghans and other Sunni extremists to ethnically cleanse lower Baltistan of its Shia inhabitants. The Shia fought them off in a guerilla war in which hundreds died.
Haji Ibrahim believes that the Taliban are going to destroy Islam but in the same breath, he is scathing about America. 'If America wants to build a coalition against terror,' he says, eyes flashing, finger pointing skywards, 'then it should stop Israel first.'
Hushe is where Greg Mortenson has built one of his schools.
- diary, 2001
